


Saviour Machine

by bughug69



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Abduction, Gen, Healing, Hurt Tony Stark, Implied/Referenced Torture, Natasha Romanov Is Not A Robot, Not Steve Rogers Friendly, The Ten Rings (Marvel), Tony Stark Needs a Hug, and the only way im gonna deal withh them is torturing tony, i have a lot of emotions
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-27
Updated: 2018-12-06
Packaged: 2019-08-25 21:56:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16669048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bughug69/pseuds/bughug69
Summary: AU Where the Ten Rings was a lot less dumb and where Tony was a lot younger when he was abducted.





	1. In Which the Ten Rings Are a Little Smarter and Tony Stark is a Little Younger

**Author's Note:**

> i’ve barely edited this and it’s my first time writing anything in a hell and a half so please be gentle

There's no real word to describe what Tony Stark, age 11, was experiencing. At least not one the young genius was aware of. He shuddered, the wet of the cave having set in as a constant bone-deep chill, then sighed.

 

A terrorist organization known as the Ten Rings had taken him captive a little over a year and a half ago, locking him up and forcing him to spend his days drawing up plans for world-ending weapons, the sort that woke Tony up in a cold sweat at night when he dreamt of the potential devastation they could wreak if they were unleashed on this world.

There was another man, at first, and somewhere in the midst of Tony's torture-induced haze, he remembered a skinny doctor with a wiry pair of spectacles that that just barely clung to the end of the man's nose. But he had left, most likely killed, and Tony was alone again.

Ten Rings' leader, Raza, visited Tony each day, and with each visit, he took Tony's old plans and gave him a new assignment, each in increasing in deadliness and in brutality. If Tony did not comply, then he would be tortured, branded and suffocated and drowned until the world blurred into a grey expanse, where the only two things that could be allowed to exist were pain and such an intense presence of darkness that it choked him more than any rope or chain ever could.

And so it was. Tony manufactured more and more perverse ways to end the human condition while the world became more dangerous for every single moment that he was alive. An eleven-year-old kid genius was responsible for the deaths of thousands, and all Tony could do was move onto the next assignment and hope with every fiber of his being that he would die in the next round of torture.

The young Stark devolved. While he could not afford to lose his cognitive abilities, his other faculties were degrading fast. Eight months since he had been abducted, Tony found that he was unable to speak. In the back of his mind, Tony knew that this was because the nerve responsible for opening and closing his vocal cords had been damaged, but the physical inability to speak scared him as nothing else had up to this point. Tony's aphonia rendered him unable to speak for himself, unable to present himself as a real human with articulable thoughts and ideas. Thirteen months in, his leg muscles failed him from lack of movement and trauma. He dragged himself across the dirt floor if he needed to get from one side of the small cave to the other. Now, after the Ten Rings had effectively stripped Tony of his body, his mind protected itself, smearing recent memories into a blur so he could just make it through each day.


	2. In Which the Reader Meets Some Familiar Faces

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> pretty much unedited, as always (:

One year, seven months, and eighteen days into his captivity, Tony was fighting to open his eyes when he heard sounds of a far-off commotion from outside whenever his little cave was. A desert in Afghanistan, probably. Lethargy was a common side effect of malnutrition, once that Tony was intimately familiar with, but if the noise was Raza in the throes of a bad mood, the Tony needed to immediately become alert in order to report to his captor. Tony had fallen asleep while finalizing a weapon he called the 'Jericho Missile.' Jericho was a missile engineered utilizing a repulsor technology that Tony had recently developed and ordered to implement into all new assignments. Raza finding out that Tony had not completed the designs for the Jericho would almost certainly result in at least one scar being added to the plethora already existing on his small body.

 

The sounds drew closer and Tony braced himself, slowly pushing himself up into a sitting position from where he was lying on a cot and facing the door. Raza had stopped expecting Tony to be standing at attention for his arrival months ago. Distantly, Tony was reminded of what felt like another lifetime, where his family butler Jarvis had cared for him once when he was bedridden by the flu. Howard had been on a business trip as he so often was and his mother was stuck in her own alcohol-ridden world, so Tony had spent most of his childhood with Jarvis.

There was a great thud at the metal door and Tony stiffened, shaking away any thoughts of a life that once was and preparing himself for the imminent torture. Curiously, the door didn't slide open to reveal a murderous Raza. Tony could make out two voices outside, neither of which he recognized. Then, there was a bang, and the six-inch thick door of solid steel dented inwards. Tony quickly ran the numbers and realized that the whatever had made that dent had to have at least 240k pounds of force behind it to make such an impact. And there he was, mute and immobile, perhaps as vulnerable as humanly possible, at the mercy of this juggernaut of strength. A cold tremor of fear ran through Tony.

The door was slowly being peeled backward when Tony first caught sight of the intruders. One of them blonde man holding what looked to be a drawn bow at the ready, and the other was a hulking green mass, wreathed in shadows.


	3. In Which Clint Decides Which Orphan He Will Adopt Next

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> un edited and i have no idea how i’m gknna continue from here lmao

"A kid?" Clint let his hands fall from the ready position they had previously been in when the occupant of the heavily guarded room turned out to be a small boy who couldn't be older than 9, huddled in a pile of rags, violently shivering. He looked terrified half out of his mind and was bruised almost beyond recognition. 

"Hulk won't smash baby," Hulk sounded distressed as he rejected Clint's earlier directions to 'smash anything that moves.'

"Yeah don't do that please."

Hulk nodded and began to turn a lighter shade of green, shrinking slightly.

"Wait- hang around a sec, " Clint grimaced and took a step closer to the shivering boy "we don't know easily we'll be able to get out of here." Hulk nodded and went outside to stand guard, aware that he wasn't the best man for the job when it came to the gentler stuff. 

Clint signed as Hulk left and then put a soft smile on his face. 

"Hey, my name is Clint," he slowly approached the boy setting his bow and quiver down in favor of not frightening the poor child more than he clearly already was. "What's yours?" The archer came to a stop a few paces away from the boy's cot, and sat down with his legs folded, trying to look as nonthreatening as possible. 

Despite his efforts, a vehement expression of distrust overtook the boy's face and his body language shut down. The shaking stopped immediately and he set his shoulders, suddenly looking years older than he possibly could have. Small fists balled at the thin blanket covering his lower half. 

"Well, if you don't want to talk to me, that's okay. I'm good at talking to myself. It would be easier if I knew who you were, though." The boy remained unresponsive so Clint continued. "See the thing is that you can't stay here. The people who were in this base before, the ones who probably gave you those bruises? They're not here anymore and I think I can bring you to a place where you would be much more comfortable. What do you say to that?"

The boy stared straight at the wall, completely unreadable. This unnerved Clint a bit to see such discipline on someone so young.

"Right so, I'm gonna come a little bit closer so I can check you out okay? I have a friend who is a doctor who can come out if he needs to." Really, it probably wasn't a good idea to bring Bruce out, given how emotional he gets when confronted with obvious signs of abuse, especially in children. But Clint was at a loss. The impossibly small boy was so visibly injured but refused to talk to him. If necessary, Clint could forcefully bring him back to SHIELD, but he was extremely reluctant to do so and risk traumatizing the child any further. 

Clint scooted close enough that he could reach out and touch the boy if he wanted. Instead, he just rested his hands on the edge of the cot and fiddled with the frayed edge of the blanket. "Look, I'm gonna be honest with you, kid," he started. That seemed to get the child's attention, and he looked up, staring at Clint with wide but deeply wounded brown eyes. "I don't really have a choice. I have to bring you with me otherwise my boss will be on my ass knowing I left a kid alone in the middle of Afghanistan. But you seem like a pretty reasonable kid. Do you think you could make it easy for me to at least find your parents once we get back?" The kid looked confused at the mention of parents but Clint breezed past it. "Trust me kid, you will be in the most capable and safest hands in the United States if you help me out. We'll make sure they can't hurt you anymore." 

The kid looked wary but turned towards Clint and seemed to be more open to suggestion. He frowned then and then gestured to his throat before pointing to his mouth again and shaking his head. The kid was mute!

"You're mute?" A nod from the kid confirmed it. "Well, let me tell you a little secret if you promise not to tell anyone. I'm actually mostly deaf in both of my ears. I use hearing aids to help me hear, but I had to get really good at reading lips and speaking in sign language. Do you know sign language?"

He shook his head and Clint sighed. "Well, you can still understand what I'm saying. Can you walk?" At another shake of his head, Clint sighed again. "You're pretty banged up, aren't you kid? Regardless, we gotta get you outta here, so I'm gonna bring my friend Hulk in here now okay? I can't carry you on my own but he can. Now, he's a pretty big guy and he's an uncomfortable shade of green but he's a friendly so there shouldn't be very many problems. Is that alright with you?" At the kid's agreement Clint called Hulk in and they made their way back to the quinjet they arrived in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if any of you guys wanna follow me on tumblr my URL is waluigis-penis (:

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't claim to be an expert on the prolonged effects of torture or isolation - I have done absolutely zero research and to be completely honest I'm a little scared to so I'm probably not gonna. This is just me being angsty as hell and finding every possible way to make tony hurt lmao. I can't say any of this has any basis in fact.


End file.
